Distant Voices Read online

  ‘Indeed,’ Caroline nodded, malicious in her turn. ‘A very excellent match indeed.’ She wondered briefly if Marianne had ever been subjected to the man’s sarcasm and insufferable snobbery. She thought not.

  The candles burned low over the dinner table as the evening grew even hotter. The ladies’ faces glowed with heat and it was with relief that after they had withdrawn, the gentlemen retired into the gardens with their cigars and their glasses of port. And it was still comparatively early when they called for the carriages, all now aware that the long-promised storm was finally on its way.

  By the time she had returned to her bedroom Caroline’s head was splitting with pain. She sent Polly away as soon as the girl had brought up her hot water, not even allowing her to stay and help her undress, then, kicking off her shoes she threw herself onto her bed. Beside her a moth beat its way suicidally around her candle; beyond the open windows the night was humid and very still as if waiting with baited breath for the storm to break.

  She must have dozed for a while. She awoke suddenly aware that the moth had dropped, its wings singed, to the floor beneath her bedside table. The candle had burned low. Her bedroom was shadowy as she made her way at last to the ewer and, dipping a corner of the towel into the rapidly cooling water, she bathed her forehead to try and ease the pain. It was then for the first time she noticed her book-case. It was completely empty. She gasped. Throwing herself down on her knees in front of it she ran her fingers over the hollow shelves. During dinner someone had come upstairs and removed every single book. No, not every book. Her Bible still lay there on the top shelf. Inside it was tucked a sheet of paper with a passage noted in her father’s neat hand. Glancing at it furiously she saw that he expected her to read and learn by heart twenty-five verses by next morning!

  ‘Papa!’ Her fury and anguish were for a moment overwhelming. She was paralysed by the sheer frustration and anger which swept over her.

  She climbed to her feet and paced up and down the floor several times before she stopped in front of the window to stare out at the night. The garden lay there cool and inviting, a haven of calm. Her headache, she realised, had miraculously disappeared.

  It was then that her rebellion boiled over. Still wearing her evening gown she slipped her shoes on once more, and opened the door. The landing was dark.

  Picking up her bedside candle Caroline crept downstairs and into the kitchen. The door into the garden was locked once more. This time she was not to be deflected. She had to get out. She crept into the dining room, still warm with the smells of food and hot wax from the candles, and found to her relief that the windows into the garden had only been latched. There was no key. Pushing them open she stepped out onto the moss-covered terrace.

  She knew where she must go. Tiptoeing towards the gate she let herself out and began to walk swiftly up the lane. No one saw her. The windows of the Rectory were all in shadow.

  The night was strangely airless. Above her the sky was sewn with stars and a quarter-moon hung hazily above the Downs, but to the south the night was thick and brooding and she thought she heard a distant rumble of thunder.

  Buoyed up by her fury and her frustration she walked fast, holding her skirts clear of the dry ruts in the lane, and turned up the path towards the church. Behind it the hillside led up steeply to the ruins of the old castle, the place she went to sometimes to be alone, when she had to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Rectory. The villagers seldom went there, and never at night, or so she had heard. They thought it was haunted. She herself had only ever been there during the day.

  The lychgate into the churchyard squeaked as she pushed it open and she glanced behind her in spite of herself. But the lane was empty in the faint moonlight beyond the ancient yews. Reassured, she shut the gate and made her way over the dew-wet grass, threading her way between the mossy, moon-shadowed tombstones. On the far horizon lightning flickered faintly, but she ignored it.

  The church was in darkness. She glanced at it warily, for the first time feeling a little nervous. The building looked somehow larger and unfamiliar, the well-known shapes and corners of the walls irregular, menacing. She bit her lip, for a moment wavering, then the thought of her empty bookcase and the string of verses from the New Testament, together with the memory of the tortured burnt remains of her poetry book simmering in the heart of the range returned and with it her anger and indignation. Gathering her skirts she began to run on towards the second gate.

  The hillside was steep and shadowed. She could hear herself panting as she scrambled up the winding path, groping blindly where the shadows made it totally dark. She could smell the night-scented stock in the cottage gardens in the village below and the newly scythed grass in the churchyard. The smell of smoke hung on the air and she wondered bitterly if it was from the Rectory chimney.

  She was panting when she finally reached the top of the hill and emerged from the wooded path into the clearing which held the castle ruins. Up here the moonlight was clear. She could see the black shadows of the crumbling walls hard across the grass. She stopped right in the middle of what had once been a courtyard and stared southwards at the sleeping countryside. Again the sky was lit by the flicker of summer lightning, and this time a low menacing rumble of thunder followed it. She ignored it. Panting slightly she walked across to a low, ruined wall and hitching herself onto it she started reciting the little litany she always repeated when she came up here. ‘Papa relies on me. I have to obey him. He means well and I have to look after him. That is my duty …’

  Duty, her soul was screaming, her duty! To suppress all her hopes and dreams; to give up all thoughts of having her own mind, all thoughts of any independence, all thoughts of a home of her own in order to look after a bigoted selfish old man? Yes … Yes … I am his daughter. It is my duty … Besides, I love him.

  So often she had fought this battle within herself, up here, in the ruined castle, where long ago battles had raged. Each time her better self had won. She had firmly suppressed the rebellion, allowed the peace of the countryside to soothe her and returned to the Rectory, meekly ready to take up her duties once more as a dutiful daughter. But this time … this time she wondered whether she could ever bring herself to go back.

  She sat there for a long time as the moon hazed and disappeared behind the clouds, watching the storm draw closer as it moved steadily inland from the sea.

  The sound of a stone falling was very loud in the silence. She stared round into the darkness, forgetting her father and the troubles at the Rectory, as her mind flew nervously back to thoughts of ghosts.

  In spite of herself she couldn’t help remembering cook telling her once of the headless man who was supposed to run across the courtyard and disappear into the thickness of the wall and she shivered. The lightning flickered again, throwing the castle ramparts into eery relief and out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw something move. Her heart hammering, she slipped off the wall and crouched close to it. It was stupid to think about ghosts. No one of any education and sense believed in ghosts! What she had heard was a piece of masonry falling; the movement was a trick of the eldritch lightning. The thunder growled once more and she took a deep breath. She should return to the Rectory now, before the rain came.

  As she stepped away from the loose rubble of the wall she heard from somewhere quite close the sound of a low laugh. For a moment her terror was so great she thought she would die, then relief flooded through her and she heard herself sigh. What she had heard was no ghost. It must have been one of the village lads, up here courting. Almost trembling with relief she frowned at the unexpected, miserable wave of loneliness and envy which fleetingly seized her as instinctively she moved back into the shadows again. Whoever he was he had come up here to be alone with his girl. It would embarrass them enormously to think they were being spied on by the rector’s daughter.

  Gathering up her skirts she had started to creep silently around the side of the wall when the sound of more subdue
d laughter pulled her up short. It was male laughter, strident for all it was guarded, and it came from several throats. Frowning, she glanced over her shoulder towards the sound, and was in time to see the flare of a flame. For a second it illumined a face as it was sucked down into the bowl of a pipe, then all was dark again. On the leaves overhead the first raindrops began to patter down.

  Caroline flattened herself against the wall, suddenly afraid again. The face she had seen was no familiar village lad. It had been that of a stranger and there had been something furtive about his action – the fleeting way he had glanced round over his shoulder into the darkness. Whatever he and his companions were doing, they did not want to be seen doing it; and she did not want to see them.

  Cautiously she stepped back, holding her breath, her heart thumping with fear. The path back down the hillside seemed a thousand miles away. Away from the trees the rain was harder. She could feel the drops cold on her head and shoulders. Praying that the lightning would not betray her she picked up her skirts again and ran towards the outer wall. Reaching it safely, she pressed herself against the wet stones, listening as she peered round. They did not appear to have seen her. Breathing a quick prayer of gratitude she stepped carefully towards the steps and flattened herself back as a brighter than ever flash of lightning tore across the sky. It was enough to show her that some dozen men were standing inside the ruined walls about twenty yards from her. A second flash showed her they were intent on piling some boxes beneath the rubble in the old castle moat.

  ‘Smugglers,’ she breathed to herself with a shiver of real fear. She had so often heard her father talking about the men who avoided the excise by bringing in brandy, wine and tobacco all along the lonely Sussex shore and how they cheated the government and the people of the country. It was a favourite theme of his. These men had obviously met a boat down in the estuary, collected a load of some sort of contraband, and were hiding it up here in the castle. Suddenly she was seething with indignation, her fear completely swamped by her anger. All she wanted to do was to get back down the hill so that she could alert the authorities and they would be caught.

  As she watched the storm surged on overhead. It was raining hard now and she was becoming drenched. Her hair pulled loose from its knot and hung down on her shoulders. Her thin dress and petticoats were soaked, the silk clinging to her body like a second skin. As each shaft of lightning tore the black sky open she cowered back against the wall. She was not afraid of storms, they exhilarated her, but the speed and power with which this one had finally driven inland from the coast was awesome. Another green flash split the night sky and as suddenly as it had come her anger and indignation had gone and she felt the excitement of the night. Her anger had been her father’s, not her own. To her amazement she realised that she envied these men. They were free, able to sail on the wild sea, ride their shaggy ponies through the storms. Like all men, they were their own masters. What they were doing was exciting and dangerous. What did it matter if the revenue men lost a few guineas? Was that so very dreadful?

  In that second, as she watched them, her heart beating with excitement, distracted by her romantic dreams, one of the men saw her in the next flash of lightning which lit up the sky.

  She saw him turn towards her, saw his hand raised to point at her, then his warning cry was lost in the crash of thunder which followed.

  Her exhilaration vanished and was replaced by icy panic. Abandoning all caution she turned and fled towards the gap in the wall. Her wet skirts tangled between her legs; her hair whipped across her eyes and her thin shoes slipped on the wet grass. Her heart pumping with fear, she ran blindly to the left, her hands outstretched to feel the wall. Another flash of lightning betrayed her. In the long suspended moment of white light they all saw her now. Dropping their loads the men were after her. She heard their angry shouts as she dodged around the end of the wall and across the strip of old cobbled courtyard.

  She did not stand a chance. They cut her off in seconds and when the next flash of lightning illumined the scene she was surrounded. She pressed herself back against the wall, trying to catch her breath, feeling the cold, wet stone against her shoulders. Her head high she looked defiantly at the men. One of them had produced a lantern, and he held it up towards her.

  ‘Miss Hayward?’ The astonishment in his voice as he recognised the rector’s daughter was genuine.

  Dazzled by the lantern light held so close to her face Caroline could see nothing of the men behind it. She was shaking with cold and fear.

  ‘You know her?’ A harsh voice queried near her, clear above the rumbling thunder.

  ‘Aye, I know her. It’s Miss Hayward – rector’s daughter.’ So one man at least came from the village. Blinded by the lantern, Caroline felt a desperate rush of hope. ‘What are you doing up here, girl? Surely you know better than to come here at night?’ His voice was hard with anger.

  The first man swore obscenely. ‘I don’t care who she is. She’ll talk. She’ll have to be disposed of.’

  ‘She’ll betray us, Jake.’ A third voice rose above the whispers of the men around her. ‘There’s too much at stake to let her go, you know that …’

  ‘No!’ Her voice sounded shrill and unsteady to her own ears as she stared frantically around. ‘No, I won’t betray you, I promise. I’ll say nothing. Please, let me go.’ She could sense their fear and anger mirroring her own as the lantern hissed and smoked in the blinding rain.

  ‘She’ll get us all hanged!’ The angry words were fierce and uncompromising. ‘Better get rid of her. Take no risks.’

  ‘Aye!’ The voices of the men around her were raised in agreement.

  ‘No –’

  Her cry of terror was cut off as the man Jake turned on the first speaker and roared at him, ‘Would you turn us into murderers, Bill Sawyer? Is that your game? This woman will not betray us. I’ll vouch for her. She’s been good to me and mine.’

  Jake Forrester. Caroline recognised his voice now. His wife had been ill for most of the summer, and Caroline had day after day taken her food and medicines from the Rectory. Pushing the others aside Jake stood in front of her. ‘Will you promise you’ll tell no one of what you’ve seen here tonight?’

  ‘I promise.’ Her mouth was dry. The faces around her were hostile, shadowed in the lamplight, streaming with rain. ‘I won’t tell anyone. I’m … I’m on your side. I swear it.’

  The excitement was gone. There was fear and suspicion all around her. She could feel them considering, weighing up the risks. Even Jake looked grim. They surrounded her, hemming her in. She was trapped. If they decided she could not be trusted there would be no escape. She bit her lip, feeling the cold rain trickling down her neck, soaking into the bodice of her gown.

  ‘Go on, girl. Get back to the village, quickly now,’ Jake said softly. ‘You keep quiet and no harm will come to you or yours. But if you ever betray us by so much as a hint …’

  The threat was obvious. She shivered. Without a word she turned and made her way towards the steps. The men parted. Blindly she walked between them, hardly daring to breathe, feeling their eyes following her. Somehow she forced herself not to run. With as much dignity as she could she walked across the wet grass and stones and out of the light of the flickering lanterns into the deep shadows of the trees.

  Once she was out of their sight she began to run, her feet finding the way by instinct in the dark as she hurled herself down the slippery path towards the churchyard. Scrabbling with the latch of the gate she pulled it open and slipped through, her breath catching in her throat. A flicker of lightning, more distant now, lit up the churchyard as she made her way between the tombstones and down towards the road to the village. The rain was stopping.

  As she let herself out of the lychgate into the lane she could feel her heart thudding beneath her ribs; she was gasping for breath, her wet hair falling across her eyes, blinding her so that she didn’t see the tall hidden figure until it was too late.

  She scre
amed as the hand reached out in the darkness and seized her wrist. Struggling frantically she was swung forcibly to face her captor and felt her arms gripped by fingers of steel.

  ‘Don’t make a sound!’ The command was hissed at her viciously. Below them on the road she could hear now the sound of horses’ hooves. A troop of horsemen were riding along the road from the direction of the village. So Jake and his friends were betrayed. Even if she screamed again they would not hear her, up in the castle ruins. And they would think it was she who had betrayed them. She struggled desperately to free herself. Somehow she had to warn them.

  As if he read her thoughts her captor released her arm and clamped his hand across her mouth. With a little moan of despair she kicked out at him and she heard him swear quietly under his breath as her foot met his shin but he did not release her. He held her in silence as the horseman passed close below them. It seemed like an eternity before the riders disappeared into the distance and the sound of the hooves on the track faded into silence. A desultory flicker of lightning pierced the yew branches overhead. For a moment their faces were lit. The man’s expression was grim as he looked down at her and at last, abruptly, he let her go.

  ‘Miss Hayward!’

  It was the Reverend Charles Dawson.

  PART TWO

  Beneath the dripping branches of the yew trees Caroline stood rigid with shock. She could still feel the burning imprint of Charles Dawson’s hands on her body through the wet silk of her dress and the bruises from his merciless grip over her mouth. He stared down at her for a full minute in the faint moonlight, then his voice cut through the silence. ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’